Posts tagged: observation dome

‘Look at this, Doug! I’ve got the Brig’s email address, I’ve got his home phone number. What’s this? BN45 7ED. I’ve got his smegging postcode!’ Oswald could barely contain his excitement. He was waving the business card like it was a winning lottery ticket.

From this, which is, by the way, utterly brilliant. And yes, the character who’s saying “smegging” is a complete nerd and conspiracy theorist. And yes, the fact that he’s saying “smegging” is probably a way of emphasising the fact that he’s a complete nerd. But still.

A thread about the Re-Mastered episodes over on the unlinkable forum has brought up an interesting debate. Which version of Series 2’s Kryten contains the edited out “Mc” from Chicken McNugget? Until today, this is how I always assumed it stood:

But there’s opinion on BTLpay that the repeated episodes did NOT have the line edited, which brings into question whether the original broadcast was edited, too! What does this do the DVDs’ ‘as broadcast’ status?

I’m sticking to my above opinion, but it would be interesting to find out THE TRUTH. Ok, so may not ‘interesting’, as such. I’m bored, ok? And quite possibly suffering from mild autism.

But the fact that there were more Mars Attacks references (the Dalek ships, the dog’s-head-on-a-human-body bit) than Dwarf ones this week didn’t stop the second half of the episode from being THE BEST THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD…

So, jumping to conclusions as always, I reckon the BBC must have at least some of their old copies of the show. Let’s see if we can get them repeated, shall we? If you’d like to pester BBC7 into giving us a repeat then just email them with your request here. If enough of us annoy them, then they’re to give in eventually just to SHUT US THE HELL UP.

In 1994, producer Peter Wagg and high-up Beeb bloke Alan Yentob, in collaboration with casting agents John and Ros Hubbard, were considering potential candidates to play the Doctor in what would eventually become (but what was then very different from) the 1996 US/UK co-production. They had an absolutely massive list of potential candidates, which included pretty much every noted British actor (and some Americans) in a quite wide age range, and even included people like Adam Ant and Chris Evans. Given the scope of the list, therefore, not too much should be read into the presence of various people on it. Even so, discovering that Chris Barrie was on there caused me to smirk while reading the book Regeneration.

(incidentally, he wasn’t the only Dwarf-connected name considered – Robert Bathurst was also on that initial list, and Tony Slattery was one of a number of actors who had videotaped auditions)

Meanwhile, back in 2005-Who-land :

CAPTAIN JACK : Can we put the bomb in the escape pod?
COMPUTER : There is no escape pod on board.
CAPTAIN JACK : Alright, I’ll get in the escape pod!
KRYTEN : An adroit suggestion, sir, with just two minor drawbacks…

Oh, and would it be churlish to point out that (back in ’94 again) on the list of names of actors whose “agents said that their clients would not be averse to a three- or five-year commitment” was one Eccleston, C?